Categories

One of the best tools in the futurist’s bag is the visual timeline. Here is one of my favorite by Peter von Stackelberg at Social Technologieshttp://www.socialtechnologies.com/, a futurist consultancy based in Washington DC. Peter started this project as a student at the University of Houston in 1989 and continues to build on it.http://bit.ly/2QKt8H

A Timeline of Major Trends and Events

In this amazing diagram, Peter tracked major events, trends and cycles froman American perspective, starting in 1750 and then projected to 2100.What’s more, his analysis spanned all five STEEP domains. STEEP is an acronym for Social, Technological, Environmental, Economic, and Political areaswhich is used for environmental scanning research. While futurists tend to prefer using a range of probable futures,Peter essentially gives a single future view. The complexity of the data justifies this approach,and viewers just need to take that parameter into account.

Peterbegan with twosets ofcycles shown under Economic trends:

1. The Kondratieff Cyclehttp://bit.ly/ar0U6 idealized as a K-Wave that considersfour distinct periods: early advance (E.D.) growth, late advance (L.A.) conservation, early decline (E.D) recession or collapse, late decline (L.D.) reorganization. Then the cycle begins again.

2. Schumpeter’s theory of creative destructionhttp://bit.ly/ZeYXn, illustrates an S-curve for major technological breakthroughs, orlead technologies.Most recently,Peter indicates eras ofsteel, thenpetroleum and now informationand projects the next era as biotech.

Uniquely, the complexity of this dataover time and topics gives a richpicture of possible futures. Any one of these areas might be somewhatdifferent and change the future substantially.

What’sIt Mean for Cities and Architecture?

Forfuture cities and architecture, a number of ideascatch my attention:

1. While worldwide oil production is said to declinefrom 2010 to 2025, a positive economic cycle is projected. The only reason I can imagine that is if new technologies and areas of production– and notjust biotech– emerge.One possible area is green tech, another is social tech, and a third is productivity among developing nations.All three would have positive results for cities.

2. Superfast Trains such as mag-lev are shown onan S-curve that is just beginning a growth cycle.I cannot tell you how excited I would be to see a train culture emerge globally. If it is a mere third of the transportation pie, I think our quality of lifeand environmental consequenceswould be immeasurably improved, especially if another thirdof transit used personal transportationsuch as walking, bikes, and otherintimate devices.

3. Smaller households from aging and delayed parentingwould create a need for more housing but not necessarily a demand for more space. One trend in the past fifteen years that can standa reversal is theaveragesize of houses, luckily already showing a decrease during the current recession.http://bit.ly/13E1Wz

4. We continue to project growth in the US, which in turn makes the economy grow. However, that growth is based on immigration which is based on being a desirable place to live with jobs,education, and opportunity– in short, the American Dream. Keeping that dream alive should be a national priority, not just for the US, but for every country. I think it has been a defining element of the past fifty years, a culture of optimism. However, on this chart, several risks emerge: end of oil, increased social and civil unrest, global population explosion,and American involvement in a war. Each of these cycles could cause majordifficulties that require preparation.

What’s Missing?

Thistimeline uses cycles, which are external forces from specific systems and represent a structural or contextual change.

The actual experience combines external large forces with theactions of individuals, groups, organizations, and nations, our intentions and innovations.By understanding grandpatterns, we can look at the best and worstfor various scenarios.

Preferred scenarios become visions, images of the future, thatshape the decisions and choices we make today.